In vivid and engaging style, Douglas Brookes uses the royal tomb of Sultan Mahmud II as a window onto the past, exploring the insights the tomb reveals about Ottoman culture in its splendid last decades. Woven into the tale are the life stories of the Turkish royals and harem concubines interred in the mausoleum, and the illustrious Ottomans buried in the tomb's garden: the statesmen, admirals, generals, and palace eunuchs who ran the Ottoman Empire, but also the musicians, artists, and poets who shaped its cultural life. The first in-depth study of Istanbul's most prestigious burial ground, Harem Ghosts leads the reader through the enchanting site that began as the tomb for one monarch but evolved into the national pantheon of the Ottoman Empire- "the Ottoman Westminster Abbey"-at the heart of the city.

In the Western imagination, the Middle Eastern harem was a place of sex, debauchery, slavery, miscegenation, power, riches, and sheer abandon. But for the women and children who actually inhabited this realm of the imperial palace, the reality was vastly different. In this collection of translated memoirs, three women who lived in the Ottoman imperial harem in Istanbul between 1876 and 1924 offer a fascinating glimpse "behind the veil" into the lives of Muslim palace women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The memoirists are Filizten, concubine to Sultan Murad V; Princess Ayse, daughter of Sultan Abdulhamid II; and Safiye, a schoolteacher who instructed the grandchildren and harem ladies of Sultan Mehmed V. Their recollections of the Ottoman harem reveal the rigid protocol and hierarchy that governed the lives of the imperial family and concubines, as well as the hundreds of slave women and black eunuchs in service to them. The memoirists show that, far from being a place of debauchery, the harem was a family home in which polite and refined behavior prevailed. Douglas Brookes explains the social structure of the nineteenth-century Ottoman palace harem in his introduction. These three memoirs, written across a half century and by women of differing social classes, offer a fuller and richer portrait of the Ottoman imperial harem than has ever before been available in English.

This book reveals multiple aspects of life in the Ottoman palace, in both its public space (the chancery) and private space (the royal household and the harem). It does so by exploring the Sultan Abdulhamid I Tomb in Istanbul, investigating the paths that open to us through the graves of the royalty in the mausoleum and those of the courtiers, eunuchs, concubines and female harem managers in the garden graveyard around it. The treasure of information at this graveyard allows us to piece together a wide spectrum of details that illuminate the court funerary culture of the era, from architecture and calligraphy to funerals and epitaphs to turbans and fezzes and poetry, as we come to an understanding of the role of royal cemeteries in strengthening the bonds between the reigning House and the populace and enhancing the legitimacy of the dynasty's rule. The book first introduces the tomb complex to the reader, interpreting its architecture, art and poetry, before exploring the lives and careers of 65 of the 86 people interred here between the first burial, in 1780, and the last, in 1863. Along the way, it reveals intriguing stories - from that of Sultan Abdulhamid's daughter Zeyneb, born (against the dynasty's rules) when he was a prince and raised in secrecy outside the palace until he came to the throne, to that of Prince Murad, exhumed and reburied late one night in 1812. By exploring the history revealed through these life stories, the book sheds light on Ottoman palace life and culture in an era that witnessed the most wrenching changes of modern Ottoman history seen until then - the reforms forcibly introduced by Sultan Mahmud II after 1826 - and uncovers manifestations of these changes in this graveyard.

In vivid and engaging style, Douglas Brookes uses the royal tomb of Sultan Mahmud II as a window onto the past, exploring the insights the tomb reveals about Ottoman culture in its splendid last decades. Woven into the tale are the life stories of the Turkish royals and harem concubines interred in the mausoleum, and the illustrious Ottomans buried in the tomb's garden: the statesmen, admirals, generals, and palace eunuchs who ran the Ottoman Empire, but also the musicians, artists, and poets who shaped its cultural life. The first in-depth study of Istanbul's most prestigious burial ground, Harem Ghosts leads the reader through the enchanting site that began as the tomb for one monarch but evolved into the national pantheon of the Ottoman Empire - "the Ottoman Westminster Abbey" - at the heart of the city.